Lions in the TARDIS
by themorningowl
Summary: Eleven and the Ponds sit down to watch the Lion King... but things don't quite go as planned. Fluffy, tame little ficlet.


"I still don't quite understand why Scar didn't just get the hyenas to kill Mufasa themselves."

Amy flopped on the couch next to Rory with a bowl of popcorn, flinging her long legs across his lap. "For god's sake, Rory, it's a cartoon, does it HAVE to make absolute sense?" Her heavy Scottish accent stuck on the 'oo' in cartoon.

"Actually, Rory," responded the Doctor as he wiped the dirt from Amy's shoes off his trousers, "Scar staged the stampede so he could pin the blame on Simba. Poor little cub. You know, I've loved The Lion King for quite some time now, watched it with one of my companions a couple regenerations back." The Doctor quieted a bit, lost in memory. He shook himself, what was the use? Rose was safe in another universe now, and happy with his duplicate. No point in making himself sad over that again. He busied himself with rubbing the dirt from his trousers. It wouldn't quite come off. "Oh, look what you've done, Pond!" He loved these trousers!

"What? It's just a bit of dirt, don't be so fussy."

"Excuse me, but are we actually going to get this movie started?" Rory stuck his tongue out at his wife as he stole a handful of popcorn from her bowl and she scowled at him.

"Right! Sorry!" The Doctor scrambled off the couch and grabbed the disc, shoving it in a strange contraption that did not at all resemble the Panasonic the Ponds had at their home. The opening credits rolled, and finally the image of a rising sun appeared on the screen before them. They settled in to watch, leaning back on the beaten up couch. They weren't relaxed for long before they realized something was wrong.

"Doctor... Where did you get this?" Rory was perplexed. This was not the same Lion King he remembered from when he was a kid. He would have remembered if the scripting was this bad.

"Yeah, why is the entire 'Circle of Life' song in English?" Amy had noticed the poor writing as well but this was bothering her much more than that.

"I got it from this Slitheen trader, real cheap. I don't know why it's doing this." The Doctor popped the disc out of the player and started to inspect it with his sonic. "And, Amy, that's just the TARDIS's translation circuits working."

"You got it from a Slitheen trader... Very cheap..." Rory was beginning to understand.

Amy saw the recognition in Rory's eyes and suddenly realized his train of thought. "Doctor, where exactly was this Slitheen trader that you bought this from?"

The Doctor waved his hand absentmindedly as he continued to sonic the DVD player. "I don't remember, some alley off Raxacoricofallapatorius..." the purposeful buzz of the sonic died out slowly as the Doctor considered the circumstances of his purchase. "Come to think of it, that was a rather shady Slitheen. I mean, other than the fact he wasn't interested in destroying any worlds, some of his products looked a bit sketchy."

Rory rubbed his forehead in exasperation. "Is it possible, Doctor, that this is a poorly pirated copy of the Lion King?"

"I... I suppose so." The Doctor tapped his sonic against his palm, looking sheepish.

Amy rolled her eyes as Rory started to lecture the Doctor on purchasing goods from untrustworthy sources. Dropping her legs from Rory's lap, she drawled, "Well, you boys are in luck."

The Doctor stopped his scornful remarks about Rory's lack of experience as an intergalactic traveler and Rory ceased his scolding to look at her. "Why would we be in luck?" Rory asked dubiously. Amy's view of 'luck' usually held some measure of sarcasm that was often hard to gauge.

"Don't you remember? I played Nala in year 4. I still have most of the lines memorized."

Rory's eyes lit up at the memory. "Oh yeah! I remember that! You were brilliant at acting. My mates used to say it was because you were such a big liar." He expertly dodged a punch aimed at his shoulder. Amy retaliated with a swat to his cheek.

"Your mates," her voice was tinged with venom on that phrase, "also used to say I ought to play Simba. Something about my 'gorgeous ginger mane'?" Rory chuckled and suffered another blow.

The Doctor ignored the small fight that broke out and raised his voice above the noise. "Yes, yes, this could work! I think I know most of Timon and Pumba's lines, and we could just improvise the rest, couldn't we?"

"Wait, wait, don't I get to do anything?" Rory pushed Amy's flailing arms away to frown at the Doctor.

"Well, you don't have any lines memorized, do you?" The Doctor replied, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, in fact, I do," Rory replied, cocking his head defiantly. "I quite identified with Simba last time Amy and I watched the Lion King."

Amy stared at her husband skeptically. "You 'identified' with Simba?"

"Yeah. You know, the whole everyone-thinks-he's-dead-but-wait-he-isn't-and-he-saves-the-day thing." Both Amy and the Doctor scoffed jokingly at 'saves the day', which prompted a frown from the Last Centurion.

"Alright, you can play Simba," the Doctor sighed, "as long as you and Amy don't take the Can You Feel the Love Tonight scene as an excuse for a makeout session in front of me." The Time Lord folded his gangly legs under himself and the three settled in to voice the movie.

In the course of the next two hours, they all tried their best at lipreading animated animals and discovered some traits in the others they were not previously aware of. The Doctor was, apparently, able to reproduce a two person (or really, one warthog, one meerkat) conversation with only one voice. Amy was surprisingly, almost disturbingly, good at doing a Scar impression.

But the most important thing they learned was that Rory was a bigger liar than Amy.

It was very difficult to understand the movie's plot when the actor for the main character did not know his lines.


End file.
